Japanese photographer Kazuhisa Nishikawa has posted 15 fashion photos taken with the Fuji FinePix S1 Pro. While not a test of the camera's mettle in difficult lighting environments, the photos do show decent colour and contrast in daylight conditions.

The latest edition of the email/web newsletter Sports Shooter is now online. This month's installment includes an advanced look at the Lightware digital packpack, the first competitor to LowePro's Stealth AW.

Wolfram Scheible notes that Kodak has posted v5.9.3 of the acquire software for their pro line of digital cameras, as well as firmware v3.2.3. The update tandem improves support for FireWire on both Macs and PCs, including the G3/400 and G3/500 Powerbooks with built-in FireWire ports. Also included in the update is the ability to transmit photos directly from certain cameras, though an extra-cost unlock key, as well as a cable kit, are required to enable that feature.

Two years ago, when Apple began dropping the SCSI ports from Mac computers, photographers with SCSI devices had to scramble to find alternate methods of connecting their scanners, CD writers, ZIP drives and other peripherals. Over time, solutions were developed, including Mac-friendly SCSI host adapter cards for G3 and G4 desktops and USB-to-SCSI adapters for iMacs, In addition, USB and FireWire versions of the peripherals themselves began to appear.

If you're looking for information about and sample photos from Kodak's DCS 620x, look no further than your web browser. The following sites have recently posted overviews of Kodak's high-ISO specialist camera, along with sample photos:

Bibble 1.09, the latest version of Eric Hyman's .NEF browsing and processing application for Windows, cleans up the slight red tinge that Hyman felt was present in some .NEF and JPEG photos processed through earlier versions. Says the author:

The Digital Wallet, a "Portable Smart Storage" device for storing images in the field without a computer, is set to ship. Starting tomorrow, the online retailer MindsGear will begin shipment of the long-awaited US$499 product that should prove popular among amateur digital photographers with limited card capacity.

Kodak's Mike Deluca indicates that the v5.9.3 acquire software/v3.2.2 firmware update, originally slated for release this week, will not be posted on Kodak's website until sometime during the week of July 24th. The updates will improve FireWire functionality on both Mac and Windows, fix bugs and will also pave the way for image transmission directly from the DCS 520, DCS 620, DCS 620x and EOS D2000 cameras,which will be officially announced sometime shortly after the acquire software/firmware posting.

Mac users desperate to make best use of the D1's RAW .NEF format are close to having a workable solution, for several hundred dollars less than Nikon Capture. Even prior to its official v1.0 release, MacBibble offers excellent image quality as well as serious butt-saving features when the exposure or colour of a D1 .NEF file is less than optimum.

Monday's edition of Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper contains an interesting article on last week's lawsuit launched against the New York Times by the National Basketball Association. The dispute centres around the newspaper's decision to sell five photos shot during 1999's NBA playoffs, which, claims the NBA, was a violation of the terms stated on the NBA press photographer pass.

Photo Mechanic Lite 2.0r5 for Mac and Photo Mechanic Pro 2.0r5 for Mac are available for download. Changes in the latest releases include a bug fix that caused the IPTC Stationery Pad to forget what text was last stored in certain fields, as well as a splitting of the supplementary category field into three fields, for better compatibility with the AP Leaf Desk.

Photojournalism's premier conference on digital photography commences in eight days. Visual Edge 2000, staged in St. Petersburg, Florida by the NPPA in concert with the Poynter Institute, features a broad range of digital technology speakers and an opportunity to see Canon's upcoming EOS D30 digital camera.

If you've been contemplating the purchase of a 14mm f2.8 lens for your D1 , DCS 620 or DCS 620x, be sure to download the full-resolution D1 sample photos posted Saturday, as well as the additional photos posted today, by Juergen Specht. If you want to see Specht's photos act fast; he plans to remove them from the web on Wednesday

Kodak USA this week has dropped the dealer cost on the Kodak DCS 620 and DCS 620x, enabling Kodak Professional resellers to offer one of the DCS 620 packages at a price that's within spitting distance of the D1's price for the first time since Nikon's pro digital camera began shipping last fall. Major Kodak dealers in the U.S., and perhaps other regions as well, are expected to take about US$1000 off the cost of a DCS 620, and about US$2000 off a DCS 620x.

In Bibble v1.08b, Eric Hyman seems to have stomped out once and for all a problem with brightly-coloured pixels appearing in deep shadow areas, especially along the left edge of photos shot at higher ISO settings. Also fixed is a crash that would occur if Color Correction was switched on, but ICC colour management was switched off, in the Options dialog.

Lowe Pro has announced the July availability of two shoulder bags designed to hold digital camera gear, a Powerbook G3-size laptop and accessories. Called the Stealth Reporter 600 AW and Stealth Reporter 650 AW, they join the Stealth backpack and Madison 1300 AW in Lowe Pro's expanding line of bags designed to meet the needs of digital photojournalists.

Bibble v1.08a, the Windows version of Eric Hyman's browser for the D1 .NEF file format, includes an improved noise filter, a fix for errant pixels that sometimes appear in dark areas, separate controls over highlight and shadow clipping and more.

Version 5.9.3 of Kodak's acquire software for Mac and Windows will fix an incompatibility between current pro cameras and the built-in FireWire ports on G3 Powerbooks, as well as add support for Sony VAIO laptops with built-in FireWire (i.Link, in Sony-speak) ports.

Back in the early days of digital, we had Piranha. Built by the AP, it was a Windows computer dedicated to extracting photos off multiple camera cards simultaneously. Someone at the AP decided that the name Piranha needed sanitizing, and Piranha eventually became DiscMinder. Now that DiscMinder is gone, along with AP's Technology Marketing division, archiving consultant David Breslauer is paying homage to the days of Piranha with his new device, called Card Shark.

MacBibble continues its steady march towards completion with the posting today of testing version 0.5. The new release of the Nikon D1 .NEF file decoder fixes a bug with versions of ColorSync prior to 2.6 (though author Eric Hyman recommends upgrading to ColorSync 2.6 or later for best performance) and adds new features.